Levels Of Moral Thinking Research Articles

The Psychometric Properties of the Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form Objective (SRM-SFO) in Kuwait

This study aimed to validate the psychometric properties of the Sociomoral Reflection Measure - Short Form Objective (SRM-SFO) in Kuwait. The participants were 218 Kuwait University students, 64 males, and 154 females, with an average age 23.70 years and a standard deviation of 6.01. The researchers validated the psychometric efficiency of the study scale. This study showed a high internal consistency stability coefficient using Cronbach's alpha method (0.89). It also appeared that the correlation coefficients Between each item and the total score of the scale were mostly high and significant. There were significant differences in the average’s degrees of apparent aggression due to the two levels of moral thinking (mature and immature) in the direction of the level of immature moral thinking. The results also showed significant differences between males and females in the percentage of individuals at the fourth level of moral thinking for females. This indicates the psychometric efficiency of the Measure (SRM-SFO) in Kuwaiti society.

مستويات التفکير الأخلاقي وعلاقتها بمهارة حل المشکلات لدى طلبة الصف الثالث ثانوي بإدارة تعليم محافظة القنفذة

هدفت الدراسة إلى التعرف على مستويات التفکير الأخلاقي وعلاقته بمهارة حل المشکلات لدى طلبة الصف الثالث ثانوي بتعليم محافظة القنفذة ، والتعرف على مهارة حل المشکلات لدى أفراد عينة الدراسة ,والتعرف على العلاقة بين مستوى التفکير الأخلاقي ومهارة حل المشکلات, والفروق ذات الدلالة الإحصائية بين التفکير الأخلاقي ومهارة حل المشکلات.وقد تکونت عينة الدراسة من (291) طالبا تم اختيارهم بطريقة عشوائية في الفصل الدراسي الأول من العام الدراسي 2018 / 2019، ولتحقيق أهداف الدراسة تم تطبيق أداتين: الأولى مقياس مستوى التفکير الأخلاقي وفق نظرية کولبرج من إعداد الباحث فوقية عبد الفتاح (2001), ومقياس مهارة حل المشکلات من إعداد نزيه حمدي (1998) بما يتناسب وأغراض الدراسة ، وقد أظهرت نتائج الدراسة أن مستوى التفکير الأخلاقي لدى عينة من طلبة الصف الثالث ثانوي بتعليم محافظة القنفذة, بشکل عام جاء بدرجة متوسطة کما أشارت نتائج الدراسة أيضا إلى أن مقدرة طلبة الصف الثالث ثانوي بتعليم محافظة القنفذة على حل المشکلات جاءت بدرجة متوسطة. کما أظهرت نتائج الدراسة وجود علاقة طردية موجبة بين مستوى التفکير الأخلاقي ومقدرة الطلبة على حل المشکلات 0 الکلمات المفتاحية : التفکير الأخلاقي , حل المشکلات, طلبة الصف الثالث ثانوي بإدارة تعليم القنفذة. Abstract: The study aimed to identify the levels of moral thinking and its relationship to the problem-solving skill of third-grade of secondary education in Al Qunfudah Governoratethe skill of solving problems among the members of the study sample, identifying the relationship between the level of moral thinking and theproblem-solving skill, and the statistically significant differences between ethical thinking and theProblem-solving skill. The sample of the study consisted of (291) students who were randomly chosen in the first semester of the academic year 2018/2019, to achieve the goals of the study of two tools were applied: The first is a measure of the level of moral thinking according to Kohlberg theory prepared by the researcher Fawkia Abdul-Fattah (2001) And thecriterion of the problem-solving skill, prepared by Nazih Hamdi (1998), as appropriate for the study's purposes, the results of the study showed that the level of moral thinking among a sample of third-grade students in secondary education in Al-Qunfudah Governorate, in general, came with an average degree, the results of the study also indicated that the ability of third-grade students in the AL Qunfudah education department to solve problems came with a moderate degree The study results also showed a positive correlation between the level of moral thinking and students' ability to solve problems.

The Level of Moral Thinking of Gifted Students and its Relation With Some Variables in a Jordanian Sample

The current study aimed at identifying the level of moral thinking of gifted students in line with Kohlberg aspects. To achieve the study objectives the moral thinking scale was administered a sample of (115) male and female students from king Abdullah II gifted school in Zarqa city. Another sample of (118) normal male and female students in the same classes were included. The results indicated that the moral level of the sample was in the fourth Kohlberg level. No significant differences among gifted students were found due to gender. There were significant differences among gifted student due to class in favor of higher classes. However, there was no significant difference between gifted and normal students in the level of moral thinking. Students who came from families with great number of siblings outscored students who came from families with small number of siblings. Student order of birth had no significant effect on moral thinking. The researchers proposed recommendations based on the results

The Level of Moral Thinking of Gifted Students and its Relation With Some Variables in a Jordanian Sample

The current study aimed at identifying the level of moral thinking of gifted students in line with Kohlberg aspects. To achieve the study objectives the moral thinking scale was administered a sample of (115) male and female students from king Abdullah II gifted school in Zarqa city. Another sample of (118) normal male and female students in the same classes were included. The results indicated that the moral level of the sample was in the fourth Kohlberg level. No significant differences among gifted students were found due to gender. There were significant differences among gifted student due to class in favor of higher classes. However, there was no significant difference between gifted and normal students in the level of moral thinking. Students who came from families with great number of siblings outscored students who came from families with small number of siblings. Student order of birth had no significant effect on moral thinking. The researchers proposed recommendations based on the results

Virtue ethics and nursing: on what grounds?

Within the nursing ethics literature, there has for some time now been a focus on the role and importance of character for nursing. An overarching rationale for this is the need to examine the sort of person one must be if one is to nurse well or be a good nurse. How one should be to live well or live a/the good life and to nurse well or be a good nurse seems to necessitate a focus on an agent's character as well as actions because character is (for the most part) expressed in action (e.g. see Laird). This paper will give an overview of the reasons for the role and importance of character in nursing practice and explain its relation to nursing's frequent use of virtue ethics in order to recommend caution. While the paper agrees that the role of character is important in nursing caution is needed in both how much moral and thus normative, emphasis is being placed on the psychology of character and on the drift to virtue ethics. The psychological which may be explanatory needs to be linked with the normative, and a justification for the normative is needed. A justification as virtue ethics is contested, and nursing practice does not need to take on this explanatory and justificatory burden. A tentative proposal raised but not discussed in depth in this paper is that when an ultimate explanation or explanatory ground is needed, nursing practice leads quite naturally to a form of consequentialism as well as a realist metaethic. On this account, there are two levels of moral thinking, and nursing practice entails the virtues at one level and leads quite naturally to moral thinking at another more critical level of the criterion of what makes something right and good independently of character.

Brains, trolleys, and intuitions: Defending deontology from the Greene/Singer argument

Joshua Greene and Peter Singer argue, on the basis of empirical evidence, that deontological moral judgments result from emotional reactions while dispassionate reasoning leads to consequentialist judgments. Given that there are good reasons to doubt these emotionally driven intuitions, they argue that we should reject Kantian ethics. I argue that the evidence does not support the claim that consequentialism is inherently more reason-based or less emotion-based than Kantian ethics. This is partly because the experiments employ a functional definition of ‘deontological’ that is so broad as to include any non-consequentialist theory, including virtue ethics, divine command theory, and even rule-utilitarianism. Thus the experiments failed to capture the reasons behind the judgments. Also, the results of the experiments are partly due to the extensive use of moral dilemmas like the footbridge version of the trolley scenario. The options in these dilemmas involve different levels of moral thinking. The consequentialist option involves higher level deliberation while the non-consequentialist option involves the lower level recognition of morally relevancy. I propose an alternate dual process theory of moral judgment. Moral thinking, whether consequentialist or deontological, requires both sympathetic emotional processing and also dispassionate reasoning.

Abstraction and Justification in Moral Theory

Ethicists of care have objected to traditional moral philosophy's reliance upon abstract universal principles. They claim that the use of abstraction renders traditional theories incapable of capturing morally relevant, particular features of situations. I argue that this objection sometimes conflates two different levels of moral thinking: the level of justification and the level of deliberation. Specifically, I claim that abstraction or attention to context at the level of justification does not entail, as some critics seem to think, a commitment to abstraction or attention to context at the level of deliberation. It follows that critics who reject a theory's use of abstraction at the level of justification have not shown that the theory recommends abstraction at the level of deliberation. It follows that critics who reject a theory's use of abstraction at the level of justification have not shown that the theory recommends abstraction at the level of deliberation and that it, therefore, compels the deliberating agent to overlook morally salient details.

How Morality and Religiosity Relate to Intelligence: A Case Study of Mathematically Gifted Adolescents

Summary In this article we explore the moral and religious reasoning of mathematically gifted adolescents (N = 20) who attend a special boarding school for gifted students in Finland. Th e sample consists of 11 female and 9 male fi rst-year upper secondary school students (M age = 16.25, SD age = 0.444). Th e participants’ intelligence and their moral and religious reasoning were measured by means of the following instruments: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III (WAIS-III); Defi ning Issues Test (DIT); and Religious Judgment Test (RJT) respectively. Th e research design was correlational and included the following three research questions: (1) How is intelligence related to moral thinking? (2) How is intelligence related to religious thinking? (3) How are moral and religious thinking related to each other? Results regarding the fi rst research question showed that moral reasoning was related to intelligence. However, WAIS-III scores were not positively linked to the DIT scores within this highly gifted sample. Results regarding the second research question showed that the most intelligent young adults were more opposed to the lowest and highest forms of religious reasoning than their less intelligent peers. Results regarding the last research question showed that the level of moral thinking was negatively related to both the lowest and the highest stages of religious judgement, but positively related to the third religious orientation stage (ego autonomy and one-sided self-responsibility).

Why Kant Could not Have Been a Utilitarian

In 1993, Richard Hare argued that, contrary to received opinion, Kant could have been a utilitarian. In this article, I argue that Hare was wrong. Kant's theory would not have been utilitarian or consequentialist even if his practical recommendations coincided with utilitarian commands: Kant's theory of value is essentially anti-utilitarian; there is no place for rational contradiction as the source of moral imperatives in utilitarianism; Kant would reject the move to separate levels of moral thinking: first-order moral judgement makes use of the principle of morality; and, relatedly, he would resist the common utilitarian distinction between actions and their motives because any correct description of an action must refer to motivation. The article concludes with the thought that any consequentialist theory based on pre-given ends (teleology) lacks the philosophical resources to distinguish between willing something as a means and as an end, leaving means only, and destroying transparency.

Moral thinking, sports rules and education1

The purpose of this study is to resolve ‘moral conflict’ in sport and to present a better approach with respect to right actions for sports participants. While acknowledging that there are many positive values or principles (e.g. Olympism) in sport, some ‘moral conflict’ in sport might still arise and therefore cannot be easily resolved. By introducing Hare's two levels of moral thinking (i.e. intuitive level and critical level), I first clarify the question ‘Why do moral conflicts appear?’ That moral conflicts may arise normally is because people or philosophers tend to think that moral principles ought to be simple and general. In the general situation, it would be fine to follow these kinds of principles when there is no conflicting situation. But in a particular context, there might be a problem. It would be impossible to resolve a conflicting problem if we do not think critically. Second, I suggest that ‘keep the rules’ can be seen as a prima facie principle or duty for sports participants. However, this prima facie principle may not be sufficient or appropriate to resolve the problem of conflict by using the intuitive thinking, since one might face a conflict between ‘keep the rules’ and ‘not to keep the rules’ and s/he cannot select in between. Thus, critical thinking is needed. Third, I try to differentiate critical thinking from intuitive thinking. Critical thinking aims not only to select the best set of prima facie principles for use in intuitive thinking, but also to resolve conflicts between them. So, if we are able to think critically, a prima facie duty sometimes can be overridden by other more important duties (sound and ethical) in a particular situation. However, as not all sports participants are capable enough to think critically, moral education regarding how to develop athletes' ‘critical thinking’ in sport is needed. It may be recommended that virtue ethics play an important role in sport not just through initiating participants into rule‐following but also in cultivating certain dispositions and educating their desires. As it is, what we also need is a good sports education system which can enlighten people toward a better understanding of sport and its values.

Moral reasoning and consistency of belief and behavior: decisions about substance abuse.

In view of implications of Kohlberg's theory of moral development, two hypotheses were considered in two independent studies: a) individuals who consider the use of potentially harmful substances to be morally wrong will be less likely to use such substances than peers who view such activities as a personal choice; and b) compared to those who are less mature, more mature moral reasoners display more consistency between their expressed beliefs about the morality of drug use and their reports of actual drug use. Two samples of college students, 29 men and 59 women in Study 1 and 46 men and 100 women in Study 2, served as participants. All completed questionnaires about their use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs and their beliefs about the morality of using these substances. Participants in Study 2 also responded to the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to assess their level of moral thinking. Results from Study 1 supported hypothesis (a). Findings from Study 2 supported hypotheses (a) and (b).

生命倫理之方法論的考察

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.在後設倫理學以至生命倫理學上，一直存在著脉絡主義與原則倫理之爭辧。脉絡主義者解決道德問題的方式，是首先審視個別事件發生的脉絡細節，作出道德判斷後再將之用於其他相類事件；原則倫理者卻試圖將一般的道德原則應用於特殊事件上。前者可視為一種「自下而上」的方式，後者則可名為「自上而下」。很多道德哲學家都指出這兩種進路各有利弊。R.M. Hare藉著引介兩層道德思維結構，來論證上述二者其實並不矛盾，相反地，它們在不同的道德思維層面，分別扮演重要角色。在本文中，我嘗試檢視Hare的論証是否成立，又是否會在實踐上引生另外的問題。最後，我將指出，中國的儒家倫理中的「經」、「權」觀念，如何可以幫助解決詠絡主義與原則倫理的問題。There has been controversy between particularism and generalism in metaethics in general and bioethics in particular. Particularists (e.g. contextualists) attempt to solve moral problems by firstly working with particular cases in all of their contextual details and then by applying these results to other similar cases, whereas generalists (principled ethicists) try to apply the general normative principles to particular cases. The former approach can be viewed as a "bottom-up" and the latter "top-down" way. As indicated by many moral philosophers, both of these approaches have shortcomings. Principled ethics have been challenged for their impotence in providing guidance in a moral decision. The challenge is in twofold: Firstly, there is scepticism that one can reach a moral judgment by reasoning deductively from general ethical principles; secondly, these theories are insensitive to and thus do not give due weight to the contextual variabilities in a specific situation. By contrast, contextualism emphasizes the relative importance of inductive method in moral reasoning. However, how to resolve moral issues by employing the inductive method remains a problem. Therefore, while it accuses principled ethics of its inability to guide moral decision, contextualism itself cannot provide any guidance.With respect to the rival views of principled ethics and contextualism, R.M. Hare thinks that both theories have grasped the truth, but only part of it. For instance, contextualism has caught hold of an important truth, that one has to judge each situation on its own merit. But if contextualism persists in asserting that in morals one cannot appeal to general principles, then it is mistaken. This is a mistaken view in that it ignores another obvious truth that some situations are similar in some morally relevant respects, and also in that it holds that these two truths are incompatible. Hare conceives that this mistake arises from confusing the concepts of universality and generality and also from failing to make the distinction between the two levels of moral thinking. By introducing the intuitive level and critical level of moral thinking, Hare argues that the two kinds of metaethical theories are not in real conflict. Contrarily, they both play important roles in our moral thinking, though at different levels. In this paper, I am going to examine to what extent, if ever, Hare's attempt is successful, and furthermore, what are the steps that should be taken to remedy the deficiency, if any. Finally, I try to show that the ideas of "jing" and "quan" in Confucian ethics operate in the two levels of moral thinking in Hare's structure, and hope that these two ideas may help to solve the issue discussed in this paper.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 23 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Universal prescriptivism: traditional moral decision-making theory revisited.

Universal prescriptivism is a recently developed moral decision-making theory that combines utilitarian and Kantian theories with two levels of moral thinking. A combined approach offers a creative solution to the weaknesses inherent in traditional moral theories. The paper describes the theory and discusses important implications for nursing education, practical ethical decision-making, and research. The relationship of an ethical theory of caring to traditional moral theory is discussed.

Moral Rules, Utilitarianism and Schizophrenic Moral Education

R. M. Hare has argued for and defended a ‘two-level’, view of moral agency. He argues that moral agents ought to rely on the rules of ‘intuitive moral thinking’ for their ‘everyday’ moral judgments. When these rules conflict or when we do not have a rule at hand, we ought to ascend to the act-utilitarian,‘critical’ level of moral thinking. I argue that since the rules at the intuitive level of moral thinking necessarily conflict much more often than Hare supposes, and since we often do not have ready-made rules for our moral judgments, we must necessarily use critical moral thinking very frequently. However, act-utilitarian judgements at this level will sharply conflict with our strongly held ‘intuitive’ moral convictions. I show that Hare’s attempt to balance these two aspects of moral judgment requires us to simultaneously adopt two conflicting sets of moral standards, and thus an attempt to inculcate such standards constitutes a ‘schizophrenic’ moral education. Finally, I briefly outline an alternative conception of moral education, based on Aristotelian phronesis.

Commentary on ‘Hamlethics in Planning’

It would be hard to find a better example than Jerome Kaufman's paper to illustrate ways in which philosophers and professionals in practical disciplines can help one another. The philosophers are helped by being brought face to face with real problems; they in turn can help by clarifying the reasoning that has to be done about those problems. Kaufman and Howe's empirical sociological researches into the diverse ethical stances of planning professionals are a gift to moral philosophers lik?j me who wish to distinguish between different levels of moral thinking. Kaufman lists four different stances that he encountered: the ethically unaware, the ethically hyperactive, the ethical relativists and the ethical hybrids. I have no quarrel with any of these terms except 'relativists', which he uses in a sense quite different from that familiar to moral philosophers. A relativist, in the strict sense, is someone who thinks that what is right or wrong for a person or a society depends on what that person or society thinks is right or wrong-i.e. that in morality 'thinking makes it so'. This is not a view that enjoys wide support among philosophers; there are well known objections to it. But I need not rehearse these, because Kaufman's 'relativists' are clearly not relativists in this sense. A better name for them would be one commonly used in moral philosophy, namely 'conse quentialists'. A consequentialist is someone who thinks that the Tightness or wrongness of actions depends on their consequences and on nothing else. There are types of consequentialism that are obviously unacceptable: for example that which denies that it is sometimes in order to say 'Do what is right and damn the consequences'. But what this means is 'Do what is right and damn the other consequences'. For to do what is right is also to bring about certain consequences because they are the right consequences to bring about. Whatever we do consists in bringing about certain consequences (that is, in making it the case that the history of the world is different from what it

Hare's Argument for Utilitarianism

Central to Hare's moral philosophy is his argument for utilitarianism. The latest and most authoritative version of the argument is in ch. 5-6 of his new book Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981). Although the argument is supposed to be still that of Freedom and Reason 6.3 in essentials, Hare says, and I think no one will disagree, that the latest version is clearer (5.1). I will, at any rate, confine my attention to it. Hare's argument is formulated at the critical level of moral thinking, and relies on the logical properties of the moral concepts used at that level. Its premises are four:

Utilitarianism and Double Standards: a discussion of R. M. Hare'sMoral Thinking

Professor R.M. Hare is well-known both for his development, over the years, of a distinctive moral theory, and for his interest in questions of practical morality, among which moral education has been prominent [1]. His recent book, Moral Thinking [2], presents the latest version of his theory and draws out its implications for our practical reasoning; it will be particularly interesting to educators and philosophers of education because of the importance Hare now lays on there being two levels of moral thinking. Moral education, according to Hare, can only proceed in a clear and unconfused way when we have learnt to distinguish these levels, for they correspond to different levels of moral development. Hare's moral theory is, he now claims, a form of utilitarianism; and both this and his separation of levels of moral thinking are worth studying in some detail, since Hare is in tune with a strong tradition of recent moral philosophy in claiming that morality requires a theory, that that theory must be utilitarian, and that our pursuit of utility must be on more than one level. Hare has always insisted that, if I am to make a moral judgement (as opposed to an aesthetic, or prudential one) I must be prepared to universalise it. This is a matter not of the content of the judgement but of the type of reason offered for it; the reasons offered for a moral judgement have to be independent of the way I happen to be, and to apply with equal force to anyone in a relevantly similar situation. The basic idea is the Kantian one that morality applies to all agents regardless of personal differences; a moral reason for me is a moral reason for anyone in a relevantly similar situation. In Moral Thinking Hare expresses the universalisability claim, as he has done before, as a claim about the agent's consistency: if I make a moral judgement in one situation, I cannot refuse to make the same judgement in a relevantly similar situation-or at least I can only at the cost of inconsistency. (We might comment that some people manage to live with a fair degree of inconsistency in their beliefs, but Hare does not treat this as a real option.) In previous work, however, up to and including the well-known Freedom and Reason, Hare joined to this thesis another, that of the essential prescriptivity of moral judgements, which left it open to the agent to adopt moral principles of unrestricted content, provided they respected the consistency imposed by the universalisability requirement. Thus, notoriously, the problem of the fanatic: a clear-headed Nazi could on this view count as holding, as a moral principle, the principle that Jews ought to be exterminated, provided he or she were not making exceptions in their own interest and were therefore prepared to stick to the principle even in the hypothetical situation of turning out to be a Jew. Hare's insistence that we are free to commit ourselves to any principle and hold it as 199

Moral Thinking in Male Elementary Pupils as Reflected by Perception of Basketball Rules

Abstract It was the purpose of this investigation to test the feasibility of applying Piaget's “Rules of the Game,” as they relate to moral development, to male pupils in the elementary grades. The study was based upon a modification of the marble experiment conducted by Piaget. Males (N = 72) in grades 1 to 6 were individually interviewed and asked a series of 5 questions on the rules of the game of basketball. Responses were categorized as typical of a morality of constraint or a morality of cooperation. Statistical significant differences were found between grade levels for the total population and the white males in the responses categorized as a morality of constraint. Pupil's responses in grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 were similar, while those in grades 1 and 2 clustered together. The results of the study lend support to Piaget's contention of different levels of moral thinking in elementary school children. It is important that those involved with the instruction and supervision of children during game activities be familiar with the various levels of moral thinking if they are to facilitate the moral development of young children.

The Just Community Approach to Corrections: A Theory

Abstract: This paper represents the attempt to apply to the prison situation the principles of moral development derived from the study of moral development in children. Existing correctional institutions do not provide the kind of experience which would foster moral growth in their inmates. In order for this to happen democratic situations have to be created in which staff and inmates can freely discuss moral issues and where staff are sufficiently aware of the nature of moral development that they can stimulate inmates to move to higher levels of moral thinking. An account is given of preliminary efforts to do just this.

The Effects of Classroom Moral Discussion upon Children's Level of Moral Judgment

Abstract: An experiment is reported on the effects of a moral education programme in schools. Children were pretested on Kohlberg's index of level of moral thinking. The experimental group was then given twelve hours of discussion of moral problems other than those used in Kolhberg's test spread over twelve weeks. Subsequent testing showed that the experimental group had had tended to move towards a higher level of thinking when compared with controls.